Editors’ Letter

Happy November! This month features our favorite holiday – Thanksgiving which not only means time off from school (yay!) and the annual Thanksgiving Day parade, but it is also a great time to show gratitude for our blessings, and give back to people who are less fortunate. In this issue’s cover story, we have an extensive list of ways you can volunteer or donate in honor of Thanksgiving. You will also learn about the great charity/Instagram “shopping cart dance” challenge that Misty Copeland and John Legend are supporting along with Naked Juice for the third annual Drink Do Good Campaign to help provide low income families with fresh food. Copeland is also in this month’s Disney movie “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms” and we include a profile on her in our Sports section.

Of course the truly best part about Thanksgiving is the over-the-top food indulgence, and who better to feature in our Five Questions than Hillary Assael, the extraordinary dessert artist and owner of SugarHi who makes not only the most beautiful, but also the yummiest desserts ever! Make sure you check out her instagram @sugarhi to see her amazing creations for Thanksgiving, or better yet, taste them!

We finally had the midterm elections this month, and we tally the many women who won their races and are making history as firsts including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who is the youngest woman elected to Congress in history. We report on Taylor Swift’s decision to join in on the political conversation, as well as many other celebrities (Shondaland’s entire stable of actors, Blake Lively and Amy Schumer) who used their platform and celebrity to encourage people to vote and made it to our “It List” along with a group of many other outstanding women. We also look back on Nikki Haley’s accomplishments as Ambassador to the UN and take a guess at what her future holds.

Another big event this month is the Country Music Association Awards (CMAs) which will be hosted by Carrie Underwood for the 11th time alongside Brad Paisley. We report on all of the women nominated for Female Vocalist of the year including Carrie Underwood, Miranda Lambert, Kacey Musgraves, Kelsea Ballerini and Maren Morris.

In Business news, we look at the huge impact women have in our military defense industry which has the highest number of women in leadership roles of any industry. We also report on Goldman Sachs’ program to support women entrepreneurs. It is great to see that companies are starting to realize the importance of encouraging women to reach leadership positions. The entertainment industry needs to step up their representation of women role models as a new study revealed that strong female characters such as superheros greatly increase young girls’ confidence, and there is a current imbalance between strong male and female roles on screens. You can read about the (painfully obvious) findings in our Culture section.

Finally we have a story on Julia Roberts who is starring in Amazon’s new TV show “Homecoming” launching this month. There are a lot of great movies and TV shows, as well as a new off-Broadway show about Gloria Steinem, a memoir by Michelle Obama, and lots of new music and concerts to check out in our Recommendations section.

We are so grateful for our amazing tribe! Thank you for all of your support and we wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and wonderful November!